Together for 20+ years. We are both in our early 50's with no children.

- we have both done well in savings, no debt.
- living in a downtown condo - no mortgage

We already travel a lot on somewhat thrifty vacation (3 times a year) and family (2 times a year). Also my folks are getting older (late 70's, early 80's)

We are just brainstorming - that is probably be better to do adventures in our 50's. So a thought:
- sell the condo, furnishings, and move momentous and some clothing to near her sibling or mine (different city).
- allocate an amount (say $1M) for travel in the next 8-10 years - we dont go on expensive cruises or hotels.
- allocate another amount (say $300K) for expenses when we are in the cities where her family or mine live
- All other investments are targeted at SWR starting at age 60
- Proceeds from condo in a safer investment - so we buy something at age 60 depending on where we decide to settle.

Any thoughts? This seems reasonable based on a few travel sites i follow. But asking from a financial POV

- All other investments are targeted at SWR starting at age 60
- Proceeds from condo in a safer investment - so we buy something at age 60 depending on where we decide to settle.

If your "other investments" are sufficient to cover your anticipated expenses, including healthcare, etc., then all the money you anticipate spending on travel is fun money. Seems ok to me. Without specifics on how much you have in "other" and what your anticipated expenses are it's hard to debate though.

From: GCD --- "If your "other investments" are sufficient to cover your anticipated expenses, including healthcare, etc., then all the money you anticipate spending on travel is fun money. Seems ok to me. Without specifics on how much you have in "other" and what your anticipated expenses are it's hard to debate though."

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Investment $s of ~$2.5M in a BH type allocation which we dont draw from and hope it grows. From age 60 (8 years from now) we would 4% SWR

Great point on healthcare - i need to start doing research on that assuming you are traveling a lot out of the country

I wouldn't sell the condo until you've not used it for a significant amount of time to ensure it isn't needed anymore. I know a lot of people who travel 6+ months a year but all of them like having their own place to come back too now and then.

I wouldn't sell the condo until you've not used it for a significant amount of time to ensure it isn't needed anymore. I know a lot of people who travel 6+ months a year but all of them like having their own place to come back too now and then.

Yeah I also would like to be semi-nomadic but no condo or apartment would be a bit too nomadic for me. I would still like to have a “home base” somewhere. It’s nice to be able to have an address for mail and stuff too, although if you can use your parents/sibling that would work too. But if you can afford it, why not just keep the condo? Or rent an inexpensive condo/apartment somewhere you like with good management that can watch over it while you travel.

I am thinking of doing something like this except I’d have 2 home bases and then travel in addition to that as desired.

The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. - Thich Nhat Hanh

It is risky to sell a home with the intention of using those same funds to buy another 10 years down the road. You might be forced into a less desirable accommodation (size and/or location).

Also, knock on wood, you are at the age when medical emergencies may force you to stop nomadic travel.

Finally, not clear at all why you need to sell your condo. Rent it, or even better, take trips often, but stay there the rest of the time.
If at the end of the story you still want to move, sell the condo then and buy something else immediately. It is more efficient tax wise and it does not expose you to the risk of decoupling between safe investment returns and RE market prices.

Honestly, we are currently in Seattle now - it is unlikely we will eventually retire here. Instead of paying a management company to rent it out, we can cash out while the downtown condo market is on absolute fire.

The thought process for a home base is either:
1. get a small apartment - in either of the cities where our families are primarily based
2. home base at my parents house. We can look after workitems when we are in town and then talk off. This would only work for about the 1st year - while we figure out our schedules etc.

I am a bit fascinated by the old guy who “lives” on a cruiseship. Some articles paint him as always on the ship. I came accross an interview with him. He moves around different ships within the same cruiseline.
He maintains a condo in miami, has a housekeeper look in every so often.
I say keep the condo til you sort out your dreams!

I am a bit fascinated by the old guy who “lives” on a cruiseship. Some articles paint him as always on the ship. I came accross an interview with him. He moves around different ships within the same cruiseline.

If I had a downtown condo in Seattle and no intention of returning there, I would definitely cash out.

As far as being a nomad, we (early 50’s) travel about 4 months a year and have a house in Southern California. We used part of the money from selling our house in Seattle (not downtown, but a single family home with an easy commute to SLU, so we benefited from the economic factors there), and bought a small motorhome. Travel by motorhome is fairly cheap, once you have the motorhome. We chose one of the small, cult brands with strong resale. It wasn’t cheap, but we don’t plan to do this forever, and we’ll get a lot of the money back when we sell.

I read an article several years ago, which of course I can’t find now, about a couple of young(ish) retirees who had no home base, but were just traveling the world. They had a financial planner send them $7000/month, and they would make it work wherever they were. Mostly they would stay places during shoulder and off seasons, ask for a monthly rate on vacation rentals, and do a lot of their own cooking. Not something I would want to do forever, but it had an appeal.

My uncle and aunt were full time RVers for 30 years. It took them a couple of years to figure it out, but they had a year round space in a park in Arizona, where they had a storage shed and mail forwarding. They spent winters there, and traveled the rest of the year.

My in laws spent a couple of years pulling a caravan around Europe, then sold the caravan, bought a boat, and spent five years on the boat. Then bought a condo and didn’t travel much.

Anyway, whole point of this is that if you want to be a nomad or semi-nomad, there are lots of ways to make it work, and you don’t have to choose one path and stick to it forever. There are options.

Honestly, we are currently in Seattle now - it is unlikely we will eventually retire here. Instead of paying a management company to rent it out, we can cash out while the downtown condo market is on absolute fire.

The thought process for a home base is either:
1. get a small apartment - in either of the cities where our families are primarily based
2. home base at my parents house. We can look after workitems when we are in town and then talk off. This would only work for about the 1st year - while we figure out our schedules etc.

OP is dead on about the real estate market in Seattle right now. Perhaps a compromise would be to sell the condo in Seattle and downsize to a smaller/cheaper condo (rather than apartment) in one of the two cities where your families are based (particularly if these cities are in LCOL areas as opposed to Seattle). Might be easier to come and go throughout the year if you own the condo instead of renting an apartment.

Wasn't SF housing market too expensive in 2008 ? Certainly the perfect time to cash in, as it looked ready to blow. It did blow and if you had sold back then you would be kicking yourself today for having missed on a ≥100% appreciation.

In bare financial terms, if you sell RE with the idea of using those funds to buy RE, that is better done leaving the shortest possible interval between sale and purchase, bar very special situations and this does not look like one.

Wasn't SF housing market too expensive in 2008 ? Certainly the perfect time to cash in, as it looked ready to blow. It did blow and if you had sold back then you would be kicking yourself today for having missed on a ≥100% appreciation.

Stock market has more than doubled since then, too. If you sold housing back then and bought a broad index fund, you wouldn't be kicking yourself.

Wasn't SF housing market too expensive in 2008 ? Certainly the perfect time to cash in, as it looked ready to blow. It did blow and if you had sold back then you would be kicking yourself today for having missed on a ≥100% appreciation.

Stock market has more than doubled since then, too. If you sold housing back then and bought a broad index fund, you wouldn't be kicking yourself.

The OP here has no mortgage, but the extent to which one regrets a hypothetical sale in the SF area ten years ago is influenced by how leveraged one was at the time.

Stock market has more than doubled since then, too. If you sold housing back then and bought a broad index fund, you wouldn't be kicking yourself.

Only if by "low frisk" investment you mean "stock market"

They don't intend to return to Seattle, though.

That's rather immaterial, unless they want to downgrade, i.e. cash 500k and buy a 250k home in 2028 (I'm using random amounts just for illustrative purposes).
From the OP post though the impression I got is that they want to cash in 500k, put it "in the bank", cash out 10 years from now and use that money to purchase another home.
My comment is why sell at all. They can get more from rent than they could from any "safe investment" and they get inflation protection from holding the same asset they would want to buy again. Bar a localized Seattle RE crash I don't see how they can do better.

Man getting an RV and being a nomad is my DREAM come true. Unfortunately, with a wife who likes to stay in nice places I don't think I will ever get to do this unless she divorces me. Hey, at least one positive would come out of it.

Good luck.

"The stock market [fluctuation], therefore, is noise. A giant distraction from the business of investing.” |
-Jack Bogle

It's not clear if the OP and his wife are interested in the nomadic life in the United States or abroad. In the U.S. it can be simpler. In foreign countries, he and his wife will have to deal with visas, languages, currencies, laws, policies, weather, etc.

I have considered a nomadic lifestyle outside the U.S., and rejected the idea because it seemed to involve a high administrative overhead. It's easier to have the base in the United States, travel for extended periods of time, and have a place to return and regroup. An advantage of having money is that you can maintain a permanent place to reduce boring administrative and bureaucratic tasks.

Victoria

WINNER of the 2015 Boglehead Contest. |
Every joke has a bit of a joke. ... The rest is the truth. (Marat F)

I am a bit fascinated by the old guy who “lives” on a cruiseship. Some articles paint him as always on the ship. I came accross an interview with him. He moves around different ships within the same cruiseline.

I'm doing it now. I have my house, wife will not go and my 31 year old son who live with us. I'm gone foe 3 months this summer and will come back for a job I love. Then in Nov. I'm heading south then east Stay in national parks for $10 a night with electricity. Spend about $50 a day gas and food, camping If I over spent I will stay put in a park for a few days reading and hiking. Death valley is really nice in Nov.

rent a cargo van for $420 a month unlimited mileage. Have bed ice box and lights and heater. Love it. Heading north then east to nova scotia this summer,

This is what we want to do in retirement. We can do it now if not for health insurance. However, if you travel mostly outside of the U.S., do you still need to maintain a good health insurance in the U.S.?
I also think there is no need to keep my big house in the U.S. with property tax, insurance, and maintenance costs.

I am a bit fascinated by the old guy who “lives” on a cruiseship. Some articles paint him as always on the ship. I came accross an interview with him. He moves around different ships within the same cruiseline.

Man getting an RV and being a nomad is my DREAM come true. Unfortunately, with a wife who likes to stay in nice places I don't think I will ever get to do this unless she divorces me. Hey, at least one positive would come out of it.

Good luck.

Same dream.
Except DW fully supports me "doing it by myself" while she lives a dream life at home-base.

I am a bit fascinated by the old guy who “lives” on a cruiseship. Some articles paint him as always on the ship. I came accross an interview with him. He moves around different ships within the same cruiseline.

Respective families are in Denver and Toronto - so expensive to get condos or apts on main transit lines. wierd thing is that i have a younger cousin that was relocated but did not sell - so our choice is to pay the market rate or help her out by covering her total cost.

for our work (over the past 15 years) we have both traveled extensively across EMEA and APAC. We currently like E.European cities (we were just in Prague 2017 summer, and prior to that in KL and Bangkok). For longer term visits, we are assuming that we can do this sort of trip cheaper if we have more time and were able to verify.

Since we are not going to settle in Seattle - i think it makes sense to sell. Denver and Toronto are both over priced and starting to crest and head lower (within 2 years). it is a gamble - but it makes sense to me.

The one thing i have not super researched ---- health care until we hit 65

One problem with keeping your condo as a rental would be that you would lose the homeowners capital gains exclusion and any owner occupied property tax breaks. If you want real estate exposure while you are traveling then you could buy a REIT with the proceeds of the condo sale.

One thing to look at is the tax implications of buying or renting a place somewhere else since that could make you liable for that states income tax. This can get complicated and where your mailing address is for your financial accounts is can be important, be sure to research the details on this since this can be more complex than it might sound.

If you will be buying an expensive RV then you need to consider the sales tax and registration fees and how to minimize those. I have not followed them but there are RV boards and web sites where they apparently have a lot of good information on how to minimize your taxes if you are traveling full time. There are old threads here that talk about RVing that you can search for.

While you are traveling might also be a good time to do Roth conversions if you still have tax residency in a state with low or no state income taxes.

- allocate an amount (say $1M) for travel in the next 8-10 years - we dont go on expensive cruises or hotels.
- allocate another amount (say $300K) for expenses when we are in the cities where her family or mine live

....
Any thoughts? This seems reasonable based on a few travel sites i follow. But asking from a financial POV

A back of the envelope calculation. It sounds like you are budgeting $1.3 million for travel and living expenses for ten years, that is $130K a year or about $350 a day and that assumes no earnings on your $1.3 million dollars. You can also make a year by year decision about how long you want to travel.

You would still need to figure out medical care but sounds very doable if you at least halfway watch your money.

He is not going to Mars, is he ? He can come back as often as he likes and also pay someone to take care of the rental.
Ideally, he would maintain residence, or at least reestablish it from time to time, since WA has no income taxes and in order to keep the capital gain exclusion.

Selling the Seattle condo makes complete sense. If you didn't own the condo and had that money invested in a portfolio of stocks and bonds, I can't imagine anybody saying "well the one thing you gotta do before you set off is a buy a condo in a city you don't intend to live in when you return and rent it out while you're away." Which is more or less what they're suggesting when they say don't sell the condo.

If you're planning on being on the road 9, 10, 11 months out of the year, I bet the economics would play better to NOT have a permanent apartment in the US, but rather do some sort of Airbnb during the periods you return "home."

Before you jump into a nomadic existence, there are a few things to think about.

DW and I owned an RV for a few years and used it for extended trips to look for retirement property.

Do you enjoy having close friends? Hard to do this with a nomadic lifestyle.

It seems like nomads have the entire wide open world to live in. The reality is closer to having ~200 square feet that everything must fit into. Including both of you. The weather is not always nice, and rainy days can be very confining. If someone is grumpy for a while there is a powerful negative synergism in being confined to a very small space with very little privacy, foul weather outside and a foul mood inside. We get along well, but a little alone time is also nice.

Before I retired, we lived very close to a VA hospital. They had a section of their parking lot set aside for RVs. Some of the RVs were there for months without moving. This is not how I want to live out my last days, and I don't want DW to do the same. Plus, not all hospitals have RV parking lots.

The thing that really stopped the nomad dream dead was the thought that when health finally forces us to stop somewhere do I want to be in a new place or do I want a circle of friends and relatives who have been around for a long time?

He is not going to Mars, is he ? He can come back as often as he likes and also pay someone to take care of the rental.
Ideally, he would maintain residence, or at least reestablish it from time to time, since WA has no income taxes and in order to keep the capital gain exclusion.

I get that. I’ve been an out of state landlord. You pay the property manager 10% off the top to allow a tenant to trash your place (there’s a reason you’re allowed to depreciate the property), and are stuck with substantial opportunity cost on the money you have invested in the property.

If they were planning on coming back to Seattle, fine. If property values always went up, then fine. But this is a condo in a part of town where a lot of people work for a single employer. Right now, the employer is doing well, and there’s a shortage of housing. Will those things still be true when OP is ready to sell in a few years?

It’s easy to establish residency in any number of states that don’t have state income tax, without tying substantial money up in a risk asset.

He is not going to Mars, is he ? He can come back as often as he likes and also pay someone to take care of the rental.
Ideally, he would maintain residence, or at least reestablish it from time to time, since WA has no income taxes and in order to keep the capital gain exclusion.

I get that. I’ve been an out of state landlord. You pay the property manager 10% off the top to allow a tenant to trash your place (there’s a reason you’re allowed to depreciate the property), and are stuck with substantial opportunity cost on the money you have invested in the property.

If they were planning on coming back to Seattle, fine. If property values always went up, then fine. But this is a condo in a part of town where a lot of people work for a single employer. Right now, the employer is doing well, and there’s a shortage of housing. Will those things still be true when OP is ready to sell in a few years?

It’s easy to establish residency in any number of states that don’t have state income tax, without tying substantial money up in a risk asset.

My point is that the money is not tied up. They cannot sell their home, put the proceeds in VTSAX and hope than 10 years from now they can purchase an equivalent home. They can't unless they want to run an unnecessary risk.
As for "allowing tenants to trash the place", it certainly depends on the property and on the tenants. If one is renting slums in West Oakland, totally; if one is renting an apartment in Pac Heights, it is another story entirely. Plus, even with that property manager fee, they'd make more than parking their money in a safe investment (10-year TIPS ?) hands down.

My point is that the money is not tied up. They cannot sell their home, put the proceeds in VTSAX and hope than 10 years from now they can purchase an equivalent home. They can't unless they want to run an unnecessary risk.

They don't plan to buy an equivalent home at all. They plan to buy a home somewhere else. Real estate markets are local.

I am still in the very early planning stages of thinking about this about seven years hence. I have not decided whether to go full-on vagabond and just travel around almost continuously or do something more like Victoria mentions and take extended trips while keeping a base of operations in US. I am for sure not going to do the RV thing but with rather travel domestically and internationally living out of AirBnBs and the like.

1. We will not do the RV thing in N.American - wife would not like it as she hates driving a sedan - so this is out of the question
2. Condo. the sale prices might go up - however .... Even though we have no mortgage, we are probably at $20K/year expenses in 2020 (property taxes and HOA fees). The WA state McCleary school funding decision alone added $1400 to the bill. The 99 viaduct tolling and other taxes in Seattle will add more in addition to this
3. Our version of Nomadic is talking off for 3-5 weeks at a time to certain countries in Asia or Europe, but on the more cost effective side. i.e. we have stayed in prestige hotels at the via veneto in Rome (work paid) - but way too fancy/stuffy, and we would never do any like that on our own dime. We would then return to our home base for a month. So traveling 6 months a year on average.

Can't track all of your financial assumptions but it sounds like you are looking at the right considerations. The glaring hole is health insurance. We would be more nomadic if not for health insurance. Our rates for a not very good policy would be $26k a year in our market. It would require $40k or so in income to offset that and we do not have the additional savings required to offset that, plus we both enjoy our part time work.

If you travel oversees full-time there are some options that are pretty reasonable but for US based insurance, it is an important financial consideration. So I would put some effort into studying that.

50's are a great time to travel, IMO too many people wait and then health issues limit their activities or destinations. Not enough people take walkabouts in the US for my tastes. Even if you travel for six months and decide that you need to put roots down somewhere, it will be a grand adventure. Sounds like you are done with Seattle so why not?

Together for 20+ years. We are both in our early 50's with no children.

- we have both done well in savings, no debt.
- living in a downtown condo - no mortgage

We already travel a lot on somewhat thrifty vacation (3 times a year) and family (2 times a year). Also my folks are getting older (late 70's, early 80's)

We are just brainstorming - that is probably be better to do adventures in our 50's. So a thought:
- sell the condo, furnishings, and move momentous and some clothing to near her sibling or mine (different city).
- allocate an amount (say $1M) for travel in the next 8-10 years - we dont go on expensive cruises or hotels.
- allocate another amount (say $300K) for expenses when we are in the cities where her family or mine live
- All other investments are targeted at SWR starting at age 60
- Proceeds from condo in a safer investment - so we buy something at age 60 depending on where we decide to settle.

Any thoughts? This seems reasonable based on a few travel sites i follow. But asking from a financial POV

Rick Ferri did this recently I believe

Whoops! I hit the post button too soon - didn't notice his response

[edited after reading a couple of recent blog posts]: What irony that the Ferri family tree was insufficient to save Babies 'R Us!